HouseandtheGhettoPrincess
by flowersofstockton
Summary: A piece for everyone where I come from...where Dr. House recovers from his physical and mental wounds by reinventing himself in San Francisco. He develops a personal and professional relationship with a feisty escort from the working class East Bay.
1. San Francisco, California  late 2000s

This story is rated Quadruple-Bypass X's. In Other Words, Adults Only!

(Contains mentions of rape and sexual assault, some violence, profanity, and medical issues surrounding drug abuse and American drug policy)

We wake up together, happy but bleary eyed at the prospect of rushing in for a full day at the hospital.  
>Once we get there, a couple of young pretty female doctors, maybe in their early thirties, smile and wave at him. "Hey," one catcalls. "You remember us, don't you?"<br>He nods, obviously embarrassed.  
>"Really wanted to thank you for paying our way through medical school! Excited to work here, maybe we'll catch you sometime for lunch in the cafeteria?"<br>"Sure, congrats, will look for you."

They walk off and he turns to look at me. "Old, uh, friends. Uh, classmates."  
>"It's okay. No judgement." I smile.<br>"Thanks. I always treated them nicely, and all that was a long time ago, back when I was younger and messed up. Was something I did to take my mind off of the patients we lost, and their crying families."  
>"Hey. Really. I understand. Look. You're human like the rest of us. And, how did you think someone living at home way out in St. Laurence could afford to run a major publication by herself?"<br>He grins. "Hey, I like you. You're not afraid of yourself. And no judgement for you either."  
>"Thanks. And don't worry, Doctor, I always used protection and got tested for diseases."<br>"Good for you."  
>"By the way, we prefer to be called sex workers. Although," I say with a flip of my hair, "I prefer the term 'professional courtesan.' Because many of us are professionals, or professionals in training. Social services will pay for, oh, maybe a bit of food and a room in a tiny apartment till you find a couple hours work here and there at a corner store. At least till the Tea Party has its way. But you don't get to have dreams and aspirations, or long range goals. For that...well, we both know what."<p>

As we approach his office, Cuddy looks at him strangely. "You look happy today, what's up?"  
>Then she looks at me, head down, disapproving. "Oh."<p>

He grins at me. "She's with the press. Visiting science journalist. You must have missed the memo."  
>"Yeah. Seems no one tells me anything these days. I mean, I'm just the boss, that's all."<br>She rolls her eyes, shrugs and walks off in a huff, before turning back to House.  
>"Well, even if you are with Miss Fancy Magazine Lady, whoever she is, you've got neonatal nursery duty today. Ten o'clock, don't be late, no crazy excuses this time."<p>

"Psssssst. I'll take your baby duty today. I love kids, it'll be fun."  
>"Thanks, but you do kinda have to be a doctor. What if something goes wrong with a kid?"<br>"You've got a pager, don't you? I'll be in touch if anything happens. You go take two hours off, go have a whiskey sour, play Farmville or WOW, do whatever you want to do while I go in there."  
>"That's tempting. A bit too tempting. But what if Kristie needs you, and a baby dies while you're calling for her? Or the other way around?"<br>"She's in court today for her husband. No cellphones allowed till noon or they'll get confiscated."

"Ok. Pager number is XXX XX XXXX." He points to an unmarked door across the hall. "Spare white lab coats in there, you should find a stethoscope and clipboard too. Just keep your head down and stay busy, no one will ask who you are."

A few minutes later I emerge, professional and ready to go.  
>"Okay. Meet you outside the glass doors for lunch."<br>He turns to go. "Oh, by the way, thanks!"

I wander in, scanning the room and peering into each isolette. Each patient seems to be afflicted with terminal cuteness. Even the ones with funny-shaped heads and blotches and birthmarks and cradle cap. I help carry some children back to their parents, encouraging the families to breastfeed for proper nutritional balance and to pass immunities on to the babies, and reminding the women to take folic acid during subsequent pregnancies for optimum neural development.

Then, I turn around and see House, fumbling with a newborn with a sheepish grin on his face. He waves. I smile.  
>"Pick him up from the pits, cradle him in your arms," I suggest.<br>"Thanks, got him."

"I don't really mind babies. Just gotta tease the administrators here, ya know."  
>"I know. My father was that way about his beta blockers, for his cholesterol. But after awhile, he took them anyway."<br>"Cool. Is he okay?"  
>"Yeah, as much as you can be for a grouchy old suburbanite who listens to eight hours of talk radio a week. But healthwise basically ok."<br>"That's good then. By the way, I know this kid. He's sort of a miracle baby. A month ago we developed a way to do surgery on him in utero to correct spina bifida."  
>"They can do that?"<br>"Yes, but it's dangerous. Only done now in emergencies. Worked this time though, look at him, he's already almost ready to pitch for the Giants!" The baby stretches out his arms and yawns. These little tubes and monitors are soooo last week, I guess he's thinking. Time for big boy toys.

"I'd like to come in here and read to the kids, have baby storytime."  
>"Yeah, there are a lot of great books out there. Like the new Adam Mansbach one. Go the Fuck to Sleep!"<br>I laugh. "Yeah, I know the feeling. Anyone who doesn't laugh at that obviously never had kids. Or needy friends or relatives of any sort."  
>"I got that to read to Cuddy's kid. She didn't appreciate it though."<br>"Yeah, that's why that's usually in the adult section."  
>"Maybe I shoulda taken the hint. Oh well, water under the bridge."<br>"Yeah. But that little phrase comes in handy. Like, Kristie, stop fucking texting me for favors! Or, Mom, let me fucking finish a sentence!"  
>He laughs.<br>"You do know I really love Kristie very much, don't you, and that I'm joking, right?"  
>"Of course. I mean, Mr. Mansbach loves his toddler, he's just got to sleep sometime, that's all."<p>

House looks pensive, then looks away before speaking softly. "Or, Cuddy, please come the fuck back into my life."  
>I gently take his hand. "I'm sorry," I whisper. "I've been there. And I wanted to see it work out for you too."<p>

He's quiet for awhile, then says, "Wish I could just prescribe myself a pill for heartbreak. But not even the greatest doctor in the world can cure love gone wrong."

Over lunch, he tells me about life in the hospital and his favorite patients and their craziest diseases. It's a fascinating job, in a kind of morbid way.

I end up telling him about working with the magazine, about scientists with great life stories, with interesting research projects, who hijacked my interviews or droned on and on about their accomplishments. Then I tell the story of how I was raped near the St. Laurence BART station on my way home from a gallery cocktail reception.

Gave the guy a hand job just to hurry him up and get him out of my car so I could get home before my parents got worried. Cops came by to arrest us for indecent exposure and we cleaned up and got out of there before getting in trouble, but I never reported rape or sexual assault since I didn't want my parents saying I couldn't go out to events for the magazine because it wasn't safe. In St. Laurence women don't go out at night...they get off of their admin jobs at five and come home for stewed casseroles and coleslaw and sitcoms with their husbands. So I was weird and stuck up already for staying out late and starting a whole big nonprofit on my own, didn't want everyone to say that I'd just made the magazine as an excuse to meet men and sleep around.

"So, let me get this straight. Some crazy drunk bastard came on to you, and you fought him off and survived, and now people say you're the one at fault because you weren't willing to sacrifice your entire career and everyone and everything you believed in so that he could have a small chance of getting caught? What part of flyover country is this again? South Dakota?"

"Yeah, I know. Thanks for the support. Thanks awfully. But I can see some of what they're saying. That the ends don't justify the means and that I'm contributing to a social climate where rape's okay and all kinds of vulnerable people around the world can get attacked. That nothing's more important than my life and I should have sacrificed for the rest of the world."

"No cause's more important than your life? Gee, tell that to all the families of dead veterans and paramedics! And look. That creep's next stop's not the Congo. But your money's next stop might very well be, if you can keep enough freedom to get out and network your way into an actual job outside of St. Laurence so you can donate to international relief. Think of how many innocents you'd be sacrificing if you limited your horizons to a St. Laurence corner store."

"Thanks. You can see why I never told anyone for many years."

"Yeah, no wonder. In a civilized part of the country, you'd have been allowed and encouraged to develop a career and move out on your own by maybe 25. Hence, eliminating these types of moral dilemmas."

"Yes, I wouldn't be 38 and still living at home. I do wish I could have reported the rape though, just to make the streets safer for everyone."

"Well, we'll come up with something," he says. "Anything other than a lovely, determined woman like yourself throwing her life away as a martyr to St. Laurence!"

We get up and head upstairs back towards the offices. On the way, he turns to me. "You know, have you ever considered becoming a doctor? I think you could do it. If you're tough enough to endure sexual assault so you can spotlight and campaign for research you believe in, you're certainly determined enough to get through medical school."

"Wow. Thanks. Don't know if I have the dexterity though, I'd hate to receive a shot from myself. Took anatomy in high school, dissected frogs and fetal pigs and eventually cats. I memorized the locations of all fifty of the important muscles, but the teacher walked by and looked at our cat and said it looked like a hawk had dragged it in from the yard!"

We laugh. "You could go into diagnostics, like me." Then he shrugs. "It's fascinating, you have to keep up with all the different fields of medicine and draw upon everything you know." Then his face darkens. "Not an easy career though. Gets hard to take very easily. People die on you all the time, in front of their families, or all alone...you feel like a failure every time, blame yourself. You can't have a normal life, end up bringing your work home psychologically."

"Maybe that's why I became a journalist and magazine editor. To support and foster all the things I like and want to learn about, but to keep enough distance so I can function."

"Yeah, and maybe that's why Cuddy left. Because I couldn't handle it." He sighs and looks away before speaking again. "Wait. Come in here, and close the door behind you very quietly." He points to an unlabeled door that looks as if it leads to a storage closet, and I follow.

Inside is a hospital bed, with a patient lying motionless under a pile of bedsheets. He or she is not hooked up to any life support equipment, and the sheet's not rising or falling. The person must be dead, I realize.

He pulls away the sheets with a dark grin and a flourish. "And, my lovely, may I now present, your little martyr-girl!"

We both look into the face of a fresh corpse.

"Her name's Michelle Jones. She's 33, no siblings or children, her husband died years back in Iraq and her parents are both serving the Lord as missionaries to Bolivia."

He opens a brown paper lunchbag and retrieves a cucumber and a scalpel. Then, he proceeds to violate the corpse. Stabbing, penetrating, basically ravishing her in the worst possible way. Fresh blood leaks out and mingles with the smells of bleach and formaldehyde.

"What are you doing?" I grab his hand. "You've gone crazy, her family's going to be upset!"

"Trust me. There's always a workaround. And this is a relatively ethical one."

"What?"

"Michelle here's going to report your rape and live up to all your supposed responsibilities. She was in St. Laurence not long after you were, and she's got less to lose than you do."

"But what about her family?"

"They're missionary doctors. Whole family's donating their bodies after death to medical science, and this is as good a way to do it as any. Getting the rapist off the streets while simultaneously keeping you out and about as a science journalist." He smiles gently before handing me the cucumber. "Your turn."

I start small, tapping and fingering her body, before finally releasing years of stored feelings.

"Yaaaaahhhhh! Baby girl, you're gonna suffer now! No more life or dreams for you...you're stuck safe home in St. Laurence for the rest of your life. Get to it girl, it's gonna be agony for you. Gotta take one for the team, martyr yourself for everyone else. I've got morals now, ya bitch. Ya hear me? Morals! Nothings more important than that." I dig the cucumber deeper and deeper into her privates, twisting it while imagining her screams.

Finally, panting, cackling, and giggling, I pull the rapist's forgotten baseball cap out of my satchel and place it on Michelle's chest. DNA evidence.

"Did I scare you?"

"Nah. In my field we don't scare easily. And that was fun."

I glance over and stare up into his eyes for several moments.

"I'll put in a call to the St. Laurence cops tonight. Report new evidence of an old crime. So now, you go out and own the night, like a firefly, whatever you do, and the streets will still be safe thanks to you."

"FireWORK," I correct. "But firefly works, too." I smile.

We collapse together, bloodied and tired, in each other's arms underneath piles of paperwork, wheelchairs, and blood pressure cuffs.

"Wow. That was amazing."

"Yeah. For me too."

"I mean, not that mutilating a corpse is amazing. But you know, that was the first time in a long while that I've been able to express anger in a way that wasn't passive-aggressive or self-destructive."

He looks away and thinks for awhile before speaking again, very softly. "Me too."

I take his hand gently, staring up at Michelle's ravaged body, sacrificed for us. "You know, I actually kind of understand necrophilia. In a way."

He turns to look back into my eyes. "Not the blood and guts and gore. But the sense of completion, finality. I used to love funerals and memorial songs as a child even. It's that you've done all you could for someone, tied up all the loose ends. Such a sense of relief, you don't have to rush around anymore dealing with complications. Can just be present with them, remembering the positive and forgetting everything ugly, and deliriously grateful that everything's finished, that you'll never again have to watch them go through something you can't fix for them."

"I suppose. As a doctor, for me death feels like the ultimate failure. That's what happened to Michelle Jones."

"She broke her neck in a car accident. Nearly DOA. That's not your fault."

"Yes. But I was already working with her. She got weak and drowsy at times, others thought it was just stress, but I was convinced it was something else. Some rare syndrome. She changed doctors when she moved back to your side of the country, so I lost her as a patient, till now when she came back to see a friend and came back into Emergency. I still blame myself deep down, could have done more."

"Don't. You can't drive yourself crazy. She and her parents wouldn't want that."

"Thanks. I know. But, I would like to make you deliriously grateful," he says, pulling me toward him with a wicked grin.

We make love effortlessly, whispering to avoid catching the attention of passing nurses or security.

"All my professional study of anatomy has paid off, eh?"

"Yes...and mine, too," I say, grateful for a lover who doesn't freak out or stop at the mention of my past employment.

...

We head upstairs, finally, for afternoon hours in the walk-in clinic.

"Warning, boring diseases ahead," he says.

"It's okay. Maybe we could use a breather till you get off work."

"I know. I just don't want to fall asleep on the job. But I can't miss this. It is my turn, and anyway if I'm not there, Cuddy will roll her eyes at me."

I stop on the steps and take his hand and whisper to him. "Just between us," I say, "she wasn't worth it."

"Wasn't worth what?"

"Everything you went through with her. Trying so hard and groveling for her and beating yourself up over thinking that it's your fault that patients died while you were giving her all your mental energy. And, you know, wrecking her place with Wilson's car."

He sighs. "Yeah...I know. Believe me, I know now. Served time in jail over that, finally pled guilty to disturbing the peace and had to relocate to San Francisco to reinvent myself. But I still miss her. Just can't stand to come home to an empty house anymore. Does something to a man to have to be alone with all his old demons."

I take his hand. "You don't have to be alone anymore."

"Aw." He grins. "You're sweet. You know that?"

"Thanks. Whatever happened with the artist patient?"

"She changed her mind again. Her little boy-toy assistant dumped her for a hipster chick whom he'd met at one of her openings, so she said she didn't want the treatments after all. No one to stay alive for, so she might as well go out with her logical thinking capacity intact."

"So, she died?"

"No...she looked online and found some natural remedies and ways to strengthen her brain. She started the treatments a bit late and asked all her Facebook friends to serve as her personal secretaries to take care of all the practical stuff so she could devote her brainpower to her art. She's still around, taking things slow for now, but she remembers me and sends me New Year's cards. And she moved to the Mission District, and is exhibiting at 111 Minna. I may go see her."

"Nice of her. And good for her."

We enter the walk-in clinic. People are already lined up out the door. Women in sweats with teeny kids, men in suits, women in suits, college kids with colds and flus from studying and partying too hard. Even someone from the Marina District with a pet baby purse-leopard in a stroller who couldn't be left alone.

He looks around before muttering under his breath. "Here I am, the almighty Dr. House, at your service, ready for the whole world to expect me to perform miracles."

I pull my phone out of my purse. 27 texts in all caps. "God, I know the feeling. Be back in a few."

A little Noe Valley family approaches with a five year old son and a baby in a stroller. The boy walks up to House, showing off his right arm. "Doctor, I have a bruise and a bump on my arm."

He says, "Sir, you have a contusion and a sebaceous cyst. Totally harmless, although you might want one of these scary dinosaur bandaids, just in case."

The dad nudges the mom. "That's fancy educated-speak for a bruise and a bump. You mean we waited two hours in line just to have the doctor tell us that?"

"Yes, because now we know it's harmless!"

"Ow, Ow My Arm!" the boy cries, and his parents rush to comfort him before realizing he's just pretending the dinosaur's eating his arm off.

Purse leopard lady takes several minutes of persuading that plastic surgery on her forehead is not an emergency, and he gives her a shot of Botox. "Shooting botulism toxin into your face! What we go through for our looks," he mutters out of her hearing.

An old dude with white hair from the Tenderloin walks his bike into the clinic. He needs dental surgery, and gets referred to another department. "Hey, I know you! Room 23A from detox!"

"Yeah...just do me a favor, willya, and keep that on the down low in front of my colleagues?"

"Yeah, it's cool. By the way, they're gentrifying Market Street. All the art brings all the hipsters and high rent. Sucks."

A perky middle-aged woman with clipped-hair and toned muscles approaches. "Oh Doctor," she moans. "I totally passed out today, right in the middle of Jazzercise."

"Hi Celeste," I wave. "Well, I see you got your chance to meet House!"

"You know her?"

"Yeah, and I probably have a clue as to her diagnosis."

"Oh don't tell me. Spoils the fun. Let me figure it out." He limps off into his office and pulls out his whiteboard and starts doing a differential.

"Let's see. Rheumatism. Nope. Too young. Scarlet fever. Nope. Vaccinated. Multiple sclerosis. Nope, her primary care doctor would have caught that. Unfortunately, that leaves our most dreaded diagnosis...Decaf Coffee!" He circles the words in bright neon green.

Wilson starts to sing, "They tried to make me drink some decaf, but I said no, no, no!" before getting shushed by a nurse.

"Okay, will watch my drinking in the future. By the way, Doctor...has anyone ever told you that you look like Hugh Laurie?" she says with dreamy eyes.

"Oh, only about fifty times a day," he mutters, before turning to her and thanking her.

Then, he pulls me over. "Oh my God, who do we have here? Borat's sister?"

I turn to see an Eastern European lady, middle aged and chubby, with black curly hair, glasses and a heavy fake-sounding accent. She's engaged in animated conversation with Wilson, Taub, Thirteen, Foreman, and Masters, and several nurses, all of whom seem to have known her for quite some time.

From what I can see from across the room, she seems to be desperate for a prescription of a controlled substance. Thirteen wants to help her out, but Taub and Wilson are conflicted about getting reported to the government and losing their jobs. Masters is threatening to report her right away.

"No matter what, you have to follow the rules. We can't destroy social mores just to help one patient, and hard cases make bad law - and bad medicine!"

Thirteen shoots back, "We're diagnosticians! We're in the business of treating hard cases uniquely. Social mores gave Socrates a hemlock cocktail. Besides, an extra script a month from us is better than her risking heart damage from going off Adderall, or crashing her car into a vanful of kids during a narcolepsy attack, or her buying speed on the streets."

"Hey, a coupla cups of strong coffee might help! And some giddyup exercises!" Celeste opines.

"Thanks for the advice, but I think she needs a little more than that," House says, just as Wilson speculates that she might be taking her Adderall on an extra side trip to Hacking, and Taub starts eyeing one of the cute nurses.

House beckons for Foreman to come follow him back into the offices.

"Hey, could you do me a favor?" he says, handing him his nametag. "I've got a long line of patients here. Can you go help Ms. Borat out?"

"Sure, but what should I do?"

"Look, just pretend you're me for a few minutes. I authorize you to do whatever I'd do."

Foreman immediately struts about with an awkward limp and shouts, "I AM THE SMARTEST DOCTOR IN THE WHOLE HOSPITAL! COME OUT WITH YOUR GOWNS DOWN!"

"I guess you aren't doing subtlety or diplomacy today," House says. "Someday please let me know how you really feel, ok? Anyway, my psych says I'm driving myself crazy and need to learn how to delegate. So I trust you. Just go and come up with some kind of creative way to take care of that poor lady."

Foreman takes the Eastern European patient into a private exam room, removes her wig, glasses, extra stomach padding, and the peasant dress on top of her sweater and jeans. "Hi Kristie," he says, shaking her hand. "It's okay. No more need for disguises. You're among friends here."

She thanks him profusely, and proceeds to explain how she has an unusually bad case of both narcolepsy and ADHD, both real, legitimately diagnosed and biologically based illnesses. Unfortunately, she requires more than the maximum legally allowed monthly dosage of Adderall to treat her conditions. Passed in order to prevent people from obtaining piles of medication to sell on the streets for a cheap high, the drug laws only took into account the medical needs of the average patient, not unusually sick people such as herself. She'd kept herself limited scrupulously to twice the legal dosage for years, and was a loving wife, mother, and church and animal shelter volunteer, but in the eyes of the law, is viewed no differently from the common meth dealer.

So, basically, our society consigns a certain percentage of its disabled members to chronic illness and pain in the name of maintaining law and order. And she lives in Marin, so this isn't even just backward St. Laurence or anything, it's the whole damn state.

Foreman looks at her. "Years ago I took the Hippocratic Oath. To care for the patients and do no harm. And that comes first. You come first. Not the city, not the state, not the DEA, not even my boss."

She thanks him once more and shows him pictures of her happy children smiling and wanting their Mommy to get well so she can win custody of them back.

"Although," he explains, "with MY boss, I know for a fact that he'd completely understand and have absolutely no problem with what I'm about to do now."

He fills a large black garbage bag with stockpiled Adderall pills, and presents it to her, winking, along with a spare janitor's outfit. "If anyone stops you, you're just taking out the trash."

They both walk out, and run into House, who asks what happened. Upon hearing the story, he quotes from George Sand's introduction to her novel Indiana: "When the God-given impetus to protest an unjust society becomes so strong, I find myself acting creatively..."

"See, I'm not that much of a Philistine. I can appreciate great novels."

House takes her aside and asks for one more favor, in return for the Adderall.

"Sweetheart, we're always happy to help. Just don't ask your journalist friend for any more favors today, okay? Let her have a night off to sip blueberry martinis and read French literature. If you want to call her to chat, fine, but she's earned a rest."

"I know. Sometimes I just get flustered and need help though."

"I understand. Believe me, I really do. I'm disabled myself and I've been there. So here," he says, handing her a card with some phone numbers and a list of websites. "Here's where to find your own Hella Pretty Army, just like Fran...and it's not an army of one."

"Thank you. God bless you! What's your email address? I'll send you some happy songs and a Precious Moments Jesus card when I get home."

House stands there, very politely, and gives it to her. "What the hell, Mr. Atheist?" asks Taub. "Are you in love or something?"

"Or something," he replies, looking earnestly in my direction. I give him a playful little slap.

"Hey," he gestures towards the crowd. "Tell them all to drink two cups of black Irish coffee with their apples and call me in the morning, willya? I've had a long day and should, uh, escort the lady home."

Everyone nods to agree, smiling deep down to see their boss finally so healthy and happy. I'm pretty much in a state of bliss, too...after all, a girl can dream, can't she?

Much love to the world,

Elena Romanescu


	2. Ten Years Later

Ten Years Later – contains mentions of rape, some profanity, mentions of prostitution and other ways of coping with extreme East Bay poverty, and mental illness and its treatments

I awaken before he does, and stare sightlessly out the window into the foggy SOMA morning. I would like to stay asleep, but oblivion eludes me and I am left with only a tightness in my chest, restless and unable to concentrate.

"What is it?" he asks, and I know he is surprised that I haven't already crawled on top of him.

But I'm not ready to talk about this feeling yet. I don't even know what it is yet.

"Nothing," I shrug.

"Come on. You can't fool a professional diagnostician. I know something's up."

"Just need some more coffee, that's all. How about you?" I bring myself into the present moment enough to gather the folds of my silk nightgown and move towards the kitchen. Clara and Pericardia will wake up soon and we need to make their lunches and get them off to the charter science academy.

"Stop. What is it?" he scowls, tapping his cane against the wall the way he does when he's frustrated with a case.

I don't answer.

"Look. You're married to the toughest, smartest doctor from Princeton Hospital. You're not back in St. Laurence begging for BART cash anymore," he says, sitting up to face our mirror and flexing his muscles.

"You remember your German romantic literature, don't you? I am the Ubermensch, the King of Workarounds," he grins, reaching out for my hand. "Not all-powerful, but pretty damn close. So please tell me what I can do for you. What's wrong? What is it you need?"

"It's hard to explain. Something I maybe should have done a long time ago. Something I owe the world."

"But what?"

"I feel guilty. That I'm smart and interesting and unique, but that it's all at the expense of others. That I'm hurting others by staying who I am."

"You mean all those regrets you told me? That was a long time ago, when you were in an extremely unhealthy situation. Things are different now. I can take care of all the little moral dilemmas you face. " He grabs a toilet paper roll out of the trash and uses it as an improvised megaphone. "Hello Dorothyyyyy," he calls. "I don't think you're in St. Laurence anymoooooooreeeeee."

"It's not just St. Laurence. It's part of who I am," I try to explain. "Even us. Look. I seduced you and used you as a powerful rich doctor who could solve all my problems and take care of all of my friends."

He shrugs. "So? You seriously didn't think I caught onto that? And I used you to get laid and to forget about Cuddy, so we're even."

I look up into his eyes. "Yeah, but I still shouldn't have been such a bitch."

I lie back down onto the bed, where he picks me up by the shoulders and sits me up next to him, so we're both facing the window, watching as the day warms and the tops of a few billboards become visible.

"You're a bitch and I'm an asshole. Come with me," he gestures grandly at the city, "and we shall rule the universe as husband and wife."

I can't resist a playful slap and a smooch at this point. But the dark, confused feeling soon returns.

"Seriously. However we got to be together, I love you. Much more than Cuddy or even Stacy or any of the girls I dated back in med school."

"But why?"

"Because. It's a logistical, headspace thing. It's all about the way my brain works, and yours too. You know when to let me concentrate and I don't get so overwhelmed and overloaded by your personality, the way I did with others. There are some things you just, well, get...and I actually feel energized by you, not drained. I don't have to make the same kinds of work vs family decisions with you, feel supported in who I am. And I only hope that I'm returning the favor."

"Oh. Oh my God," I moan, collapsing into his arms. "Wow. I've always felt that way, was just hoping for years, deep down, that you did too."

He stands up for a moment, pulls on a bathrobe and leans out into the hall. "Hey Peri and Clara, today we're trying a new experiment."

I hear the girls groan from their bedrooms. Now in elementary school, they've lived through several years of their father's quirky new ideas. From the scientifically correct nursery rhymes to the backpacking trips where they earned licorice candy for correctly identifying our local lizards and insects with field guides, our family's always been, well, eclectic and charming. Our house is frequently full of curious classmates, and I joke that Greg does this for the attention of his admiring bevy of nine year olds.

"Hey. Today you're going to design a lunch menu that's optimized for quick nutrition. Something that incorporates all five sections of the food pyramid that you can make before the carpool comes, and that will give you the nutrients you need for a whole day of sketching, jump rope, foursquare, whatever you girls do at school these days."

I ask, "So you're asking them to make their own lunches?"

"Yeah. You need me more than they do today, and a science project's a creative way to keep them busy. And come on, I'll show you something."

He beckons me into our walk-in closet, towards some drawers the maids never touch and which we've not opened in years. Who knows, maybe he keeps all his old high school trophies in there, next to my early attempts at novels.

"I guess I've never told you," he says, opening the top drawer. "But here's our secret stash of family jewels. Tranquilizers. A little secret medicine for anyone who ails you. So, does someone need these? Some jealous competing journalist, some cantankerous agent or publisher? Do you want these in your mother's coffee? In my mother's Earl Grey tea?"

"Thanks. But no. It's not that."

"Look," he whispers. "I have to admit it's a little hard on me to suggest this, but well, I pride myself on being modern and enlightened, not just slavishly following tradition or morals because people think I should. You know me," he stops and looks at the ground before continuing.

I nod.

"So - I know I'm gone very long hours sometimes, even for weeks on end, when I've got a tough case to solve at the hospital. So...what I'm saying is, I'll understand if you're, you know, frustrated and not getting your physical needs met. If you need a, well, a companion, I'll show you how to find one and look the other way. It's only fair, after all the women I've hired before I met you. And I know I'm older than you ... maybe you'd like someone closer to your own age? This isn't so easy for me, but I'll go with it, all I ask is that you be safe and that you find a hotel and don't do it in our bedroom, because, you know..."

"Aw. No, sweetheart. It's not that," I laugh. "You're doing a quite magnificent job in that department."

He grins, and I see relief in his eyes. And I hear the sounds of Clara and Peri chatting in mock British tones, pretending to be serving ladies for a medieval feast. As rational and tough as we are, they still retained a bit of playful romanticism, and I'm secretly glad they're headstrong enough to be unique.

"Well then, what is it then?" He bends and puts his hand on his bad leg, clearly in annoyance, and I feel bad for him. "You know, you don't usually do this to me. It's torture for a man, especially a scientist like me. I want to solve the problem and can't do it if I have to keep trying and failing to guess what's going on. And part of what I've always loved about you was that I didn't have to guess, that I'd always know what was on your mind and how I should react."

"Okay," I say. "I'll open up. A couple of years ago, my parents took me to a psychiatrist. They were worried I was too naive, that I couldn't properly read social situations and that people would take advantage of me. They thought Kristie and all those other people you met were screwing me over and that I couldn't see it and so couldn't survive in the real world. That I might act too weird or get frustrated at work and wouldn't be able to keep a job, or would just be irresponsible and selfish and mess up my life and hurt others."

He takes my hand. "Me too. I've told you that. God, I've been through every psych or detox program in New Jersey. Not fun. And not just as a young adult, too. And you can't even imagine how many people I've screwed over. But you have to learn to move forward."

"I know. But they suggested a medication, and I didn't want to take it. It was going to calm me down, make me less impulsive...but I'd gain weight and become less active, and get some nervous tics or possibly tardive dyskinesia, look unusual in public. And you know me, I'm Miss Cosmopolitan Princess, Life of the Quirky Cocktail Party, and didn't want to deal with that. But maybe I should. Maybe I should go ahead with it, give up myself and my mind for the sake of others if my mind's making me be a selfish bitch and harm others."

"Oh," he says, looking into my eyes with concern, pulling me close. I look up and see he's fighting back a few tears, despite himself.

He's quiet for a very long moment, before I excuse myself to kiss Clara and Peri goodbye. I'm now even more glad for the carpool service at the eco-friendly magnet school.

"I know," he whispers. "I suspected that, after I'd known you a few days. And I thought...well, all right, I hoped...that maybe we'd be okay being ourselves if we had each other. That we could together protect the rest of the world from ourselves, if you know what I mean."

"Yes," I say. "I know."

"And...the rational, utilitarian side of me says to do whatever you can to be as moral and well-adjusted as possible, whatever the cost, since there are so many more other people in the world to benefit from that, and only one of each of us. But, the human side of me cries out that I've finally found someone who understands me, and that I don't want to see you turn yourself into someone else."

I listen, nodding, as we move back to sit on the bed, still in our bathrobes. Luckily I work from home and have no meetings scheduled today, and someone else's covering his walk-in clinic hours this week in exchange for double duty next time around.

He closes the window against the burgeoning sunlight and whispers, "Look. I feel like I've just found you, and I don't want to lose you. Please."

I wrap my arms around him, and we collapse into each other, the Abilify prescription soon forgotten.

That was, I believe, the day we conceived Alex. The son he'd always secretly wanted, named for the discoverer of penicillin.

...

Pregnancy filled me out, making my body feel soft, clumsy, less defined at the edges. Wondering if it had affected my personality in a similar way, I surrounded myself with gentle stimulation to protect my limbs and enhance my creativity.

I'd subconsciously rejected femininity for many years, identifying with male heroes and film stars and action figures as a child and young woman. In high school and college, boys had found that cute and flirted with me before finding me too confusing and awkward and nerdy. Even my mom had called me a 'man's woman,' saying that I'd make someone a good wife someday.

But I wasn't consciously trying to 'get a guy.' I wasn't even trying to be a guy or tomboy, didn't feel drawn towards identifying with either or any gender, was just going along and doing whatever I had to, or wanted to do.

I didn't even really think about guys in a romantic or partner-sense until I got old enough to have to think about moving out to raise my children in a safer neighborhood and about raising the cash to survive and take care of our tribe/family of choice. A bunch of us had banded together on the Net, talking each other down from suicide attempts, writing letters and looking up resources for each other for emergency assistance, and helping out with rides and medicine and negotiations with landlords and shelters to prevent homelessness. Blood families were often absent or full of their own problems or without enough resources to take care of their own, so we formed our own families, groups of teens and young adults and a few older people, loyal till the end and pitching in to shelter and provide for those on the streets, mentally different, or escaping violent abusive situations. None of us would have made it without each other, and we weren't about to abandon anyone.

Women in St. Laurence didn't control money...we submitted to our parents before marriage, and our husbands afterwards. One of the biggest topics of discussion in our Sunday school classes at church was what a woman should do if her husband refused to tithe.

So the men in my life, outside our St. Laurence and Internet 'tribe,' were basically creative funding sources, tools to keep our tribe eating every day. And, eventually, for keeping the Rorschach Zeitgeist, the variety magazine I founded with friends and old classmates and still help publish, online.

'Survival's my wife,' I used to mutter to myself, 'and love's a mistress.'

I'd mentally rejected femininity as a child because from what I'd seen, it represented frantic stress, work, burdens, and guilt. Walking around behind the world with a broom and dustpan, overwhelmed and exhausted, frustrated with everyone else's selfishness and lack of cooperation. I'd been-there-done-that as a five year old, in a kind of macho (or shall I say macha?) act, sweeping the floor and panting exaggeratedly afterwards, complaining on a plastic play phone about how busy I was, picking up gift books about Getting Organized and Managing Your Life and Your Schedule the way other kids grabbed at candy and tearing my room apart.

All that, when I wasn't bartending! I'd already somehow discovered the poor woman's mental health care, or at least a facsimile of it, in my mom's kitchen cabinet, mixing up her colored sugars and spices into minicocktails in Dixie cups.

But now, as the wife of the baddest, toughest wealthy smartass doctor in San Francisco General Hospital, I could relax enough to explore gentler aspects of femininity, and I was enjoying it.

Lighting peach and lavender candles in our loft, enjoying the raspberry lemonade and hummus and rich decor of Hayes Valley's Cafe Soleil, a virgin Sweet Baby Jesus kiwi cocktail on the oaken barstools of Nob Hill's artsy Cafe Royale, and even trying a henna bodypainting and meditation class at Love of Ganesha in the Haight for my swollen stomach, I thought of what it would have been like to be pregnant back home in St. Laurence.

Those ladies were tougher than I could imagine, and I'd barely missed becoming one of them. I thought of standing on my feet all day ringing up groceries with the child heavy inside of me. Of coming home to haul heavy furniture and sanitize kitchens and bathrooms with bleach, of not having a car and trying to pick out the healthiest food possible from the corner mini-marts. Of asking around for hand-me-downs from relatives and neighbors, or setting up LiveJournal blogs to make friends and share cash for bus fare and thrift store clothes. Community and recycling before they were cool. And they still weren't cool, or romantic or rustic or pretty, they were survival.

"Life is what it is," I could hear my mother say.

Weird, I told myself. Only seven years away from your old life and now you're not sure how you could have handled it.

...

I walk up the steps towards home, steadying myself on the handrail with one arm and resting the other protectively atop my uterus. Living with a doctor has gotten me in the habit of anatomical correctness.

When I open the front door, I notice a few guests have already arrived, three hours early. We're hosting an event that's simultaneously a baby shower for Alex and the annual Rorschach Zeitgeist reception.

I start to chide Greg for letting people in before we had a chance to rest and see that everything was ready, but stop when I see who's here and realize they would have found their way in no matter what. A couple of our old groupies and hangers-on from my college days, they gulp Pliny the Elder and Schmaltze beers while showing off Ipads and Iphones to each other.

Now, how to hold up both ends of conversation with them for the next two hours and fifty-nine minutes? None of the three guys who are here write or make any type of visual art, despite repeated attempts to get them published in Rorschach Zeitgeist. We've even offered to print HTML code and the text for Iphone apps, but no takers.

One of them, Steve, glances hopefully, furtively, over in my direction. Probably a signal that he knows I'm taken and will keep his distance, but he wants me to know that should anything go wrong in my marriage, he's there and available.

I look back sympathetically, chat with him for a few minutes, ask about the new comic book museum in the Mission, then walk back to my husband. Greg saved the Rorschach, back when I was conflicted about reporting my rape and possibly losing my privileges to attend evening openings all over the Bay Area and make many of the connections so vital to our continued success.

Motioning for the caterers to lay out the vegetable trays, I walk into our closet and bring out a set of dolls, books, action figures, toy cars, etc for Clara and Peri and all the other children who will show up soon. We're even serving their favorite inelegant guilty pleasure, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.

"You do realize this is all thanks to you," I whisper dreamily in his direction. "Without you, we all wouldn't be here."

He grins. "Yeah, so there better be plenty of chips and salsa and beer here. I'm not eating parsley all night!" And I laugh, remembering our first attempt at entertaining, when we underestimated our guests' hunger.

"And do I have to play doctor tonight? I know it's different for you, but I'm really trying not to bring work home."

Occasionally at these parties, after too many rounds of lemon drops and blueberry martinis, people made a game of asking him crazy medical questions. And he starts off giving serious answers, then before folks realize it, he makes his own game of thinking super-hard and giving silly advice.

I shrug and say, "It's up to you," knowing he won't be able to resist solving medical puzzles, even at a soiree.

Folks start to trickle in. A photographer and her sister who're anthologizing photographic images Germans have created of Native Americans, who set up equipment and begin a slide show as the first round of guests sip at their martinis and raspberry lemonades and snack on nuts and veggies and hummus...and yes, a bit of parsley!

A lady with three kids,friends of Clara and Peri, all part of a mime troupe and decked out in Victorian gowns and masquerade masks, and a couple who paint old-style Chinese restaurants but who met playing dulcimer.

Someone who works all day at an insurance company, then goes home to digitally alter surrealist-inspired photographs according to his 'Transcendent Dream Logic.'

The winner of the St. Clara Poetry Slam and Hot Dog Eating Contest, and an official, authorized Emperor Norton impersonator.

Tons of people who would never be under the same roof in any kind of natural setting, college kids and suburban housewives and professors and janitors and all kinds of crazy lovely folk, all chatting and eating and drinking together. People murmur and coo and congratulate me on being eight months along, winking knowingly at Greg and at my stomach.

"Mazel tov," Taub congratulates, toasting a glass of whiskey in our direction before tippling off in the direction of some girls young enough to be his daughter.

"Dork alert," a twentysomething kid with a Massive Attack T-Shirt who's scarfing down potato salad, pulling his girlfriend closer.

"Hey," reproaches the girlfriend, reaching for some nuts. "He coulda heard you."

"Cheers," grins Wilson.

"Congratulations," says Cuddy, sampling some parsley. "I wish nothing but the best for you - " She starts to say "you both," but something flickers across her face, and she pulls out a tissue from her purse and looks away for a moment.

He reaches out for her hand, and she clasps it. "How's Rachel?" he asks.

"She's all right. Off at super-sleepaway camp for gifted teens. And she mentioned you the other day. Was cleaning her room and found a picture of that old pirate cartoon you used to watch with her. The one I always made her turn off, remember?"

He grins. "Of course. She's a great girl, I'm so proud of her. Tell her I said hi and to have a great time," he says, and I notice their hands are still clasped.

So I reach out and clasp both of theirs, gently smiling at Cuddy. "Very nice to see you," I graciously say, then invite her to come by anytime for coffee with us and to bring Rachel to play with Clara and Peri.

I feel a little sorry for her, newly single again after separating from the investment banker she'd dated just a few weeks after breaking up with House. I overheard her saying there just weren't any good men out there anymore, that maybe nature intended her to raise Rachel alone.

"You mean, no perfect men," Foreman and Wilson had teased.

I thought about perfection for a moment. Was there such a thing as a perfect person, or a perfect partner for someone? Maybe or maybe not. Maybe it didn't matter. After all, House was the first man I'd dated, or been, well, involved with a nonprofessional context, to have a real fulltime job. He actually went to work during the day and brought home a salary and I didn't have to support him financially. Maybe that sounds like an unromantic thing to care about, but when you've spent hours every month worrying about which bills to pay when to minimize the overdraft fees, it is kind of a turn-on. Seriously, the Wells Fargo website with negative balances is one of the world's worst passion killers.

Later in the evening, a Croatian poetess and a comic book illustrator who specializes in pre-Raphaelite dragons arrive together, and unroll prints of their work for an impromptu show. Clara and Peri take a break from their coloring and come watch.

Getting up, I look around the room. These people are all so unique, I think. Way more interesting than my novel characters. I couldn't have made them up. Was like watching a living laboratory, a full-size petri dish of social interaction. What would happen next? One could never know.

I remembered how earlier in the day, Greg and I had gone to visit my eighty-seven year old widowed grandma, living in a mobile home a few miles northwest of St. Laurence. Her senior citizens' neighborhood was silent, aseptic, empty of dogs and children and perpetually pastel and seventy degrees.

We'd brought her copies of the Rorschach and some of the cheese and fruit we'd be serving later that night, and I'd taken her hand and tried to engage her in conversation. She'd greeted me, then acted confused and upset that I'd brought a stranger into her house without her permission, even though we'd both been visiting throughout our marriage.

My parents, who were taking turns staying with her, took me aside and explained that they'd been having a tough time with her lately. She'd been resisting wiping in the bathroom, taking showers, eating off of clean dishes, even opening doors and screaming at them to leave. They weren't sure how much of it was her losing her mind and how much was her attempts to somehow reassert some control over her life.

Maybe Greg could actually help, I wondered. He wasn't so bad at caregiving, I thought, going over some events from the past ten years. Our elopement and wedding, when he'd showed up outside my family's St. Laurence home at just the right time, during a lecture on room-cleaning and Not Helping My Friends, and carried me off on his motorcycle to Reno before anyone could look at the text messages on my cellphone and get upset. Finding Thirteen passed out in her apartment, her sickness, eventual hospitalization and death. He'd choked up at her funeral, barely able to get through the ironic tribute he'd written, and said she was like a baby cousin or little sister to him. Finding housing and career coaching and positions at the hospital for younger members of my 'tribe,' which he now called 'our' tribe and had adopted as his own.

Even a medical-billing telecommute position for Kristie to do from home on her own schedule, which led to her and I writing recommendations together for cheaper, fairer, easier and more affordable healthcare costs and accounting procedures, which we presented to an administrative panel at SF General and a committee of state representatives. And, sadly, I remembered Kristie's funeral too, the viewing and burial down in Santa Cruz by the sea, with Fleetwood Mac's Beautiful Child playing and calls for people to adopt shelter dogs in her memory. He'd scattered a bottle of Adderall over her grave, along with a few of his Vicodins, a touching gesture even though we'd heard the next morning that tourists and hipster teens had ransacked the site to unearth the pills.

I came over and he was upbraiding Grandma. "You're just a weak old lady. You can't be nice to anyone, you can't keep the dishes clean, you can't even put them in the dishwasher. You're nobody! And I bet you can't even stretch your legs up and down."

Horrified, I'd rushed over to defend my grandmother, before I realized he was eyeing her prescribed exercise chart and using reverse psychology, and she was putting her plate in the dishwasher and stretching her legs...and grinning at him.

I warned him that her moods changed and that the strategy wouldn't always work, which it didn't, half an hour later. In previous visits, he'd tried complimenting her lovely home and her looks, hoping it would make her pay more attention to them, tried distraction, tried giving her choices with limited alternatives, tried explaining things in a calm, repetitive way...all of which he tried again, but ended up nowhere, so he pulled out his last resort, chamomile tea with a soothing voice and a few Vicodins mixed in with her blood thinners.

"Not all the time, you know. Just when she's about to go through something mentally painful and humiliating, like your husband giving her a shower. Mental pain's still pain, so it's just like giving someone pills after breaking their arm."

My parents looked at each other, but thanked him. On our way out, he turned to me. "Or, for the mental pain of being alive...and being me."

I just held his hand on the way home.

Suddenly, my mind shook itself out of the memories and back to tonight's soiree. A dangerous species had arisen in our living room petri dish: a political discussion. And one of the worst kind: not between the religious-right Republicans from Danville and San Ramon and the San Francisco progressives. Those often actually get resolved rather quickly, with shrugs and laughter and an appeal to how different we are and how strangely beautiful it is that we're at the same party. No, this discussion is among the progressives, about differences in terminology.

I saunter over to Greg and start to clue him in on some of the Bay Area identity-politics debates.

"Oh, I know. We had that back in Jersey. Half the time it resulted in someone trying to sue me and get me thrown out of the hospital for saying the wrong word to a patient. But I meant well. I wanted them to get pissed off at me, rediscover all their righteous indignation and harness it to fight off their disease."

I shrug, remembering Greg's controversial past. He's always liked to think he has a method behind his madness.

"Sometimes that works," I say, thinking of my teen years and my desperate attempt to prove to my parents that I could, in fact, stay organized and handle my life. "But it also makes people hate you."

He laughs. "Oh, I'm used to that. Worth it when it's for a good cause though."

I take his hand. "I hate you," I coo.

"Oh, I don't believe you for a minute. Gotta be more convincing than that."

"I HATE YOU!" I whisper loudly.

"What?" asks a nearby stranger with a glass of water.

"Oh nothing," his friend reassures him. "Just House. Being himself, as usual."

After a lull in the conversation, I resume explaining Bay Area progressive politics to my husband, letting him in on a secret under my breath.

"Usually in my life identity politics mean that someone identifies ten times what I make as rightfully theirs, because of something to do with my family or ancestors that has nothing to do with my personal situation. Then when I go to rectify things however I can, they pick on whatever desperate thing I'm doing to earn the cash as an affront to their community. And if I complain, I'm coming from a place of privilege."

He shrugs. "Yep, that's about right. And they did that in Jersey, too."

A couple smartly dressed women, with large "Keep Your Laws Off My Body" buttons, approach, taking my hand with looks of concern. Greg and the people near us step aside, as the women's posture suggests they want to speak to me privately.

After a few minutes, I wander back to House, literature about rape after-trauma and counseling in hand.

Now I shrug. "I know they're just trying to help," I say. "And I was polite, and I respect that. But they won't let me forget. Won't let me live my life now, enjoy you and the children and the magazine. It's as if my rape has to define my whole life now, that I have to go be traumatized or have to go be an activist, when I already had a whole life going that I wanted to go back to. Isn't it supposed to be, you know, my body, my choice?"

I gulp down some tonic water and look around the room. I'm ranting, and I'm just getting started.

"And I bet if I try to explain any of this to them, they'll freeze up and shut me up and say they're 'triggered.' Well, fuck triggers. Some people are so sensitive they can't come across any reminders of their assaults online, while meanwhile here I am out there every night reliving my assaults in the hot tub place with strange men to earn enough cash to pay for the disaffected, impoverished, trigger-happy feminists' Internet access!'

I believe in compassion and minimizing suffering wherever possible for all living beings, regardless of levels of privilege or past experiences. So I'm not saying to go trigger people, just to stop and look at the big picture and create real economic opportunities and community empowerment along with watching tone and language. Class and disability and other issues matter as much as race and gender.

House looks thoughtful. I'm actually not sure who annoys him more, militant activists with obvious blind spots, or sleazy men who come on too hard or rape women.

I continue. "Sometimes it's as if the whole world wants me to be some kind of obedient wifey, stitching on a little sampler with my legs crossed. Rapists, of course, want to control me, have me please them. But then the social conservatives want me sitting there at home stitching words about chastity, while my family and neighbors and boyfriends wanted me to stay home and stitch rhymes about safety, and now the feminist movement wants me to cross my legs and stitch about my trauma! No one will let me out of the sewing room and the kitchen to define my own life. When do we get to stop being victims and survivors and actually survive?"

He throws an arm around my shoulders. "Well, MY wife does NOT have to stitch on any sampler!" he affirms. "Unless, of course," he looks around to see if people are listening, and if he's creating the desired effect.

"Unless, I can come and uncross your legs while we sew diagnoses on the thing together," he says, pantomiming writing onto a stretched cloth. "How about Von Hippel Lindau Disease? Or Ankylosing Spondylitis? Or the Bubonic Plague? Now wouldn't that be a clever gift from the hospital giftshop? Bring it home as a souvenir for the kiddies?"

Everyone laughs. Now that he's securely in the center of attention, it's time to play doctor.

Tipsy, silly party guests come up to him with strange symptoms, some real and some fake, and he gives them a diagnosis.

"Too easy. Ethanol overdose," he snickers at a young man resting on our couch.

"Parsley overdose," he reproaches Cuddy, and she gives him a faint smile.

"Trimethylaminuria. Caused by the body's inability to digest certain amino acids, gives off a strong fishy smell," he calls out to an old gregarious friend of ours with an earthy sense of humor.

Eventually, the party ends, and we say goodbye to the last of the guests and partycrashers, ask the caterers and maid to clean up, and put Clara and Peri, and ourselves, off to bed. Clara and Peri can take some of the artists' sketches to their rooms to look at in the morning, and we...well, we find our own adult amusements, carefully spooned into each other, both nurturing each other and what we now know are twins. Alex and Philippe, from the middle name of the physician who pioneered handwashing as a sanitary procedure.

...

It's a Sunday afternoon in late fall, and Greg invites me to go for a drive.

"Where?" I ask, but he just beckons for me to follow him, and I get in the car. Clara and Peri are at a friend's house for a sleepover, and the magazine's between issues, so we've got some time to ourselves.

After forty minutes of driving, I recognize where we are. We're across from the St. Laurence BART station, near the former location of the cheap diner where the guy forced himself into my car before attempting to rape me, right about twenty years ago today.

The diner's long gone, was a Bakers Square, then a Shari's, then some kind of knockoff place with every third brand name misspelled that sold hard liquor and cheap purses, then a check cashing place, now it's a cracking, weed-strewn foreclosed hovel. People wander the streets, some aimlessly, some picking up cans to redeem for cash, some drinking cheap beer out of brown paper bags and chatting with neighbors.

He pulls over, stops the car, and gets out for a stretch. Clearly in a good mood, he grins and slips snacks and Vicodin tablets to all the nearby wheelchair-bound street people.

"Now, if you live in San Francisco, and you're born into the Tenderloin or the Bayview, it's not easy, but you can theoretically walk over to a Goodwill and pick up some work clothes and walk over to another neighborhood where there are jobs. But, how the hell would you ever find your way out of here to find work?"

"You don't. That's why we need to invest in employment and infrastructure and local community here. People are still people here, and can be amazingly resilient and resourceful with empowerment and realistic resources. Supporting local small business and entrepreneurship, attracting investment and capital, promoting telecommuting opportunities so the elders and housewives and young women can safely earn some cash from home while caregiving. And awareness training for corporate HR departments, so they don't discriminate based on gaps on resumes."

"Hey, you should be an economist. Or a sociologist."

"Well, I try, as a journalist."

The 24-7 fastfood place, which now closes at eleven, is open, and the smell of stale ketchup mixes with diesel fumes. Its magenta sign flickers, casually in and out of sync with the St. Laurence Shopping Village marquee, a faint purplish hue decorated with a graffiti mural.

I wouldn't have remembered this place at all except for the fact that everyone keeps bringing it up, since I'm a registered-trademark survivor now and have lived through, or attracted, or irresponsibly tolerated, something horrible.

Rape sucks. But losing the ability to go out and create beauty and encourage people through the Rorschach Zeitgeist and to provide for and protect our chosen family/tribe would have been horrible.

And, incredibly, unbelievably, Greg understands that. As with the conceptual artist patient he had years back, whose right to choose he stood up for when she thought about not having treatment that would compromise her mental capacity, he's always had nothing but respect for my ability to make rational choices among a set of imperfect alternatives and do the best I can to care for and do right by all who are involved. I've thought about making buttons for us and the medical staff, "Trust People...even when everybody lies."

I reach out and take his hand. "I know where we are," I whisper. "This is where it happened, this parking lot."

He looks over. "I know."

"I still feel guilty about it, that I didn't report it at first. That I wasn't willing to stay home and sacrifice, that I maybe contributed to the assault of other women."

He looks over in my direction again, with a mixture of tenderness, incredulity and confusion on his face. "Well, you were going out at night to break up fights between Kristie and her husband, remember? If you'd been kept home for your safety, she could have died, remember? And you were providing an outlet and a light and hope to so many through including them in the Rorschach. And you still are. I'd have to kill you if you'd let yourself give that up."

I'm at a loss for words and simply stroke his hand and smile.

"Let me tell you something," he says. "There are different kinds of people in the world. Those who build and sustain societies, and those who benefit from that and have the luxury of living in them with clean consciences. Doesn't make it any easier to handle the loneliness and inner conflict of being in the first group, but at least you know where you are."

It's true. There are the crossing guards and kindergarten teachers and ministers of the world, and then there's us and the rest of our crazy crew, a wild mixture of Peter Lake, master trickster and thief from Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale, Angel Tungaraza, baker and artisan from Gaile Parkin's Baking Cakes in Rwanda, starting from scratch to take the bitterness of life and render it sweet, the Prize Winner from Defiance, Ohio who supported her whole family of ten children off of her winnings from writing contests, Vianne the rebellious chocolatier from Chocolat, Kowalski the free-spirited, self-reliant racecar driver from Vanishing Point, James Bond, Sherlock Holmes, and all the various other mavericks and scoundrels who break rules when needed to keep everyone else safe and fed and alive.

He reaches into a cooler into the back seat, taking out two martini glasses, olives, a bottle of vodka and another of tonic water, and fixes us both drinks, toasting to me.

"Wanted to redefine this place for you, celebrate and honor the anniversary. This is not a place where you were weak, this is a place where you were brave. Like the Spartan child who stole a fox to bring back to his starving family in wartime and let it eat out his stomach rather than have it escape and be discovered. You took care of your own and of your dream here, and you wouldn't let anyone stop you. You can be my heroine, if you like."

I raise my glass and we toast, clinking our fine glassware together and putting the top down to enjoy the day. This is what I love about House. Plenty of other men would have brought me flowers, chocolates, wine even, but only he would have been clever and insane enough to drive me back to the scene of my rape for an anniversary celebration, and I love him for it.

"You're magnificent, please let me have your babies," I coo into his ear, unbuckling our seatbelts and falling into his lap. We embrace, and I grimace, feeling a sudden contraction. "Wait, I think I am. Seriously. Right now!"

He looks around and shrugs. "So, should I be crazy and deliver them myself, here in the parking lot? We've got pliers and WD-40 in the trunk."

I look around in mock horror, to which he replies, "Nah, maybe next time. Let's get to Stanford Hospital!" while putting the key in the ignition.

On our way to the hospital, I look around at the panorama unfolding outside our car, on both sides of the Bay. The multicolored graffiti on warehouse walls, the plastic bags and cigarette butts, the dive bars, where people of all generations raise their Heineken glasses and, like the Pink song, don't get fancy, just dancy.

The shipping port, with rows of multicolored truckbeds and traincars arrayed before the whitecapped water, the shopping centers, full of California girls in sandals after Labor Day, the yellowed hills with marshgrass redolent of decay, the sparkling tech firms, ethnic restaurants, and medical and financial firms.

I look over at House, and notice he's humming. "The words of the prophets are written on subway walls, tell me more..." and I chime in with Rob Thomas' Street Corner Symphony.

And I think, this could be part of the meaning of our lives, the search itself a part of the answer. Stopping to observe, to watch and learn, to find and celebrate the spirit of the times, to scavenge and observe and celebrate the beauty and mystery of the wonderful chaos all around you, wherever you are. This is the Rorschach Zeitgeist, the summation and quest of our existence. And a pretty damn good birthday for Alex and Philippe, if you ask me.

Das Ende!


	3. TwentyFive Years Later

Twenty Five Years Later – sex, intense and scary medical crisis, death, some reappropriated religious-ish themes

Suddenly awake at three in the morning, I rub my eyes and smell the coffee already roasting at the cafe near our new Hayes Valley loft and mixing with the scents of fog, our cats' food, and traffic.

I lean towards my husband in bed, embrace him, then pull away.

"I don't deserve you," I moan.

"Well, then don't deserve me. Just enjoy me," he responds in a thick whisper, and we do so, even at our advanced ages.

He's beautiful, and we've enjoyed twenty-two ecstatic years of marriage. And now we stay up for a few moments to chat.

"Hey, know what? They're finally installing that new diagnostics computer in our department. But we're not out of jobs yet...still too many kinks in the system to work out. And besides, with the economy the way it is, the power goes in and out, they have to conserve it for life support machines."

Now it's early morning at SF General, and the emergencies are already up and in full swing. In one room there's a sudden cardiac event with no prior health problems, down the hall there's a child with advanced pneumonia and blistered feet from walking all the way here, right in front of me is an injured veteran who needs two prosthetic legs after stepping on a landmine.

All over the rest of the place are the usual quiet catastrophes we've seen before and during Palin's presidency: malnutrition and complications of vitamin deficiency, fibromyalgia and other chronic conditions worsening with lack of treatment and stress, sexually transmitted infections in poor students and single parents, and of course the pepper spray and rubber bullet injuries.

Already I can hear the protests starting, and imagine the dusty men, women, and children outside on Market Street parading and chanting with stringy hair. "What do we want? A chance! When do we want it? Now!" Occasionally, someone yells, "Survival!" instead of "A Chance!" and the message gets a bit garbled.

After Alex, Philippe, Clara and Pericardia found work and moved out, I'd finally taken my husband's advice and earned a M.D., and now we shared a department. A team of dedicated unemployed interns now managed the Rorschach Zeitgeist, occasionally buzzing my Iphone with thoughts and questions, and we prided ourselves on being able to offer them a stipend, something to live on while covering the gaps on their resumes.

I glance out at the skyline, peering out towards the Civic Center. The Opera's doing a production of Lucrezia and the whole city's been covered in posters and billboards for the 'heroic martyr.' Rape and suicide amid the wreaths and glitzy shopping bags and adoptable storewindow puppies, shop til you drop!

Back to work, checking in on patients in various states of disrepair. Sprained ankles, pneumonia, broken arms, and an occasional bacterial infection. I try to start with treatable stuff first, to keep my spirits up before heading off to see the kids with cancer and the middle-aged folks with chronic heart disease and pulmonary conditions. 

Everyone on our staff's in a pleasant mood today, at least. Park's cracked a few jokes here and there and Adams has brought everyone breakfast burritos with **couscous** and spinach. And the nurses are humming and making the best of our crowded busy day. And Wilson let Taub borrow some picture frames from his collection of gifts from patients to frame his baby pictures.

Everyone, except for the diagnostics computer. It's on the fritz again, along with the appointment calendar and billing database. We've called tech support, but they can't come out for another week.

"It's okay," my husband grins, then repeats more seriously. "I can handle it. Isn't that why you hired me, anyway?"

I smile.

So, he went at it, like a modern John Henry, who raced the steam engine to hammer in railroad ties, running from room to room and bed to bed, carrying his clipboard and stethoscope and shouting out thoughts to the nurses.

"Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease."

"Cough, cough. Thanks."

"Lupus. Unfortunately, it really is lupus this time," he says solemnly to a middle-aged woman, who nods and thanks him for finally acknowledging that something really is wrong with her, that she isn't simply lazy.

"Chronic fatigue syndrome. Possibly Epstein-Barr virus. Unfortunately even espresso might not help, but hang in there."

"Thanks." The patient reached to shake his hand, but my husband had to run out of the room with only a nod.

"Wilm's kidney tumor," he says to a young boy's parents. "Treatable, with a good prognosis."

"Obsessive-compulsive disorder. Caused by an untreated strep infection to the brain's basal ganglia," to a guy bouncing up and down on one foot. He then looks over at his mother, with a paisley pink purse bulging with extra pockets for the dozens of plastic packets of tissues she's carrying, and whispers under his breath, "Or, maybe it's hereditary."

I check in on a handful of my own patients, including several elderly folks with diabetes and heart trouble, and take the time to reassure a man with Alzheimer's disease that yes, he's in the right room and the right office.

Then, I start in on the reams of paperwork burdening all modern medical professionals. Insurance, billing, forms related to new drugs and malpractice lawsuits. None actually against House...the patients generally realized there was a method to his madness, once they walked out alive and healthy, or at least with logical answers about what was happening to them. 

However, he'd been slowing down recently, limping more than usual and walking more slowly and sighing the way men do when their souls are tired. Some of it, I knew, was obviously that he was actually old, already seventy-two. But there was more, more weakness than usual. I noticed, because I was his wife, and woke up next to the guy every day...or well, several times a night. When the hospital started to get more crowded we had to agree that he'd sleep out on our futon couch before especially busy days, since whenever we shared a bed, we still hardly got any sleep at all ;)

But now, I was really worried about the guy, in a way I'd never been before. And I reached out to do a whole shelf of the bureaucratic paperwork that he cursed.

He passed by and saw me working, and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, inspiring wistful glances from Chase, Wilson, and Taub. Each of them had had their ups and downs in the love department, and I'd cheered them on and served as a patient sounding board for advice, as my husband had provided sarcastic little insights into the male psyche to Adams and Park. And I wished them all the best, as I'd developed a certain amount of sympathy over the years for those of all genders regarding matters of the heart.

And House had even softened over the years, speaking in a calmer voice and taking more suggestions from the diagnostics team. We appreciated that, but we'd also realized that deep down we admired his strength, his independence of mind and ability to stand up and lead when a decision had to be made. We wanted him to be kind, but to stay strong enough to make a difference in this hospital. So, I knew to let him be strong when it mattered, to never contradict him in public and to express my gratitude for the work he did to save so many lives.

But today he seemed less strong, seemed to have wrapped his arm around me as much for himself as for me.

"Well, my lovely queen, you'll be pleased to know that I've started an initiative among the doctors here where we're contributing a percentage of our own salaries to cover rape kits and exams for the survivors. No matter what the president says, this is San Francisco, not Wasilla, or South Dakota, or St. Laurence! This is civilization here, and we're going to act like it," he says, pounding his cane into the ground for emphasis.

I nod and thank him. He sees that I'm glancing over at an opera poster some visitor's left tacked up against the wall.

"We'll make it so there don't have to be any Lucrezias here. We've got a full on support system for all survivors of physical, societal, and economic violence. Family counseling to assist those who choose to report rapes and assaults, anonymous reporting to a community crimestoppers line, and community-based, nonpolice and prevention strategies for those who choose that route. I did not marry a Lucrezia, and I'm not letting the medical system create more violence in people's lives." 

"Good for you! You can be my hero, anytime," calls Adams. She's come to understand House over the years, and his personal way of caring for others, even if it isn't traditionally sappy or philanthropic the way she would do it.

"And no person's going to have to choose between having a life and staying alive. Except, of course, for one woman," he says, gesturing towards a photo of the president. "Ms. Palin, now, if she gets raped, I'm telling her mom to keep her safe at home, away from dangerous places where she gets in trouble, like the White House!"

The office breaks into spontaneous rounds of cheering. Meanwhile, House wanders away, in search of yet another patient to diagnose and save.

After a few hours of paperwork, I decide to go check on him.

He's slumped over a dinky little orange folding chair in the breakroom, not moving, with his mouth hanging open.

"HELP!"

I discover he has no pulse and isn't breathing, so turn him to the side and begin CPR while screaming between breaths for someone to come.

A passing nurse and another physician arrive, relieving me and carrying him to a hospital bed. And, with my years of experience, I know the 'dead-on-arrival' look.

Even knowing how much this would bug my extremely rational husband, I decide not to believe what my senses and intellect are telling me. Not yet.

I grab for his hand as they're carting him out of the room, managing to reach the small of his back. His skin already feels stiff and cold.

Wilson rushes in, carrying a half-eaten bagel and fumbling with the cane he, also, now uses to get around. He looks at his friend of thirty years, and then at me.

"I'll take over for you for the rest of the day. Or week. Or month," he offers, hand on my arm. "I'll even go on that sick baby's ambulance ride for you. Be with Greg. You've really made him happy," he says, stopping for a moment, before adding, "in ways even I couldn't."

That's a wonderfully kind offer, and I consider accepting, to be at my husband's side, the way a wife should, and the way I want to.

But then I think. I don't have a normal husband. I married Dr. Gregory House, Diagnostician Extraordinaire. And he wouldn't want me to leave a tiny premature patient in crisis, or to go without figuring out what's wrong with this little boy, whose mother had rushed him in days ago after he developed a fever and refused to eat.

What had seemed like treatable, but risky, bacterial pneumonia at first had proved to be something much worse, since an urgent-care medical clinic on the edge of the city, way out near Glen Park, had called to say they thought he was having seizures.

The physician on call there had tried to reach 911, but couldn't get through. A huge Occupy protest still raged in several neighborhoods, despite the grinding rain, and people were being rushed in with all kinds of bullet wounds and broken bones and random internal injuries. Spontaneous riots had ignited all around the Bay Area and other major cities with the chaos, and some urban areas had become virtual war zones.

As if it weren't enough that the United States currently fought seven foreign countries, bringing soldiers home in body bags and threatening to force a default on our debt, plunging the Dow and most folks' bank balances underwater. Books in the grocery stores and airports already proclaimed the End of Western Civilization, and folks here glanced at the TVs in the waiting rooms and agreed.

Everyone and their cousin seemed to be calling paramedics, and most were receiving busy signals, from what we were hearing. The entire city, even emergency services, had suffered in several rounds of budget cuts, so the already short-handed crew of paramedics were overwhelmed.

So, we were sending our own ambulance to pick up the baby, and a diagnostic specialist was riding out with them to get him. And, I thought about my husband, and his life and legacy, and I knew I'd be the one.

But first, I rushed into House's office and grabbed an envelope from his bottom desk drawer. He'd asked me to open and read it if anything should ever happen to him, and never to touch it otherwise.

Inside the ambulance, heading south but stuck in traffic, I gently open the envelope.

I haven't listened to the voicemails on my cellphone yet, but I already know from everyone's faces before we left, and from the fact that there's only one message from the hospital and not dozens asking for information and medical advice, that my husband's no longer a part of this world.

I'll grieve later, I know I will. Already I can hardly catch my breath, hardly face a night alone. I'll probably ask Thirteen or Cameron to keep me company. Or maybe Cuddy. This night will be hard for her too, and we can share memories.

A note's inside the envelope addressed to her, with a note to give it to her without reading it first.

However, there's another long, handwritten letter he made for me on old parchment and blotter paper from an apothecary shop we visited in a funky small town's historical district on our tenth anniversary. It's all of our favorite jokes, and memories, and several sarcastic comments on each event. Never has snark made me weep so sincerely.

But, I've got to turn my focus back to the current patient. We've already snaked our way through the shopping crowds near Union Square and the tattooed protesting crowds in the Mission, and navigated past the Civic Center's white mausoleums to the past. Now, we're navigating the slippery hills of Diamond Heights near Glen Park, seesawing past suburban houses and about to reach the sick child we're here to help.

Even with the recent years of natural and societal disasters, it's impossible to turn San Francisco completely bleak. I only wish we were coming to appreciate the hidden underbelly of her glory under better circumstances.

We load the newborn, Joshua, into a tiny cot and hook him up to a baby oxygen tank just in case. One look, and I realize, even before he receives the inevitable MRI's and brain scans, that his little fits and coughs are miniature seizures. He'll need radiation and probably brain surgery, and does not have an easy road ahead.

I stop and talk to the family, holding the mom's hands and shaking the father's. They agree to follow in their own beat-up 2002 Chevy, and soon lose us in the winding roads.

Good idea, because our ambulance develops mechanical problems and stops running not too long after we start. We have to pull off the road to avoid being hit, and it's still scary on the shoulder because there are so many crazy drivers speeding around these places, especially in the rain. I have a feeling we can keep the little baby stabilized for another few hours till we get him in the hospital, but it would be awful and distracting to have the family with us panicking.

Wind rocks the vehicle, and I instinctively reach for the baby's hand to keep him calm. His little fingers grasp mine with unusual strength given his fragile condition, and I blow him a kiss while singing a lullaby.

Oh, if only House were here. He'd have wonderful, calming, hilariously fractured children's songs and stories for everyone, and would probably fix the vehicle and supply the boy's diagnosis while he's at it.

All we can do is look within ourselves and ask what he would do in our place.

Someone approaches, dressed in an old sweatshirt jacket, jeans and work boots. "You guys need any help?"

His name's Frank, and he's a plumber and amateur mechanic, and noticed us on his way home from work.

Every adult passenger steps out, we put the ambulance in drive, and he helps push us farther off the road, onto a nearby home's gravel driveway. Their collie starts to bark and runs towards us, and soon the neighbors are waiting with us, putting flares in the road and waving to signal passing cars to watch out.

Everyone peers inside to take a peek at little Joshua, adoring the baby and praying for his quick and full recovery. He's ok for now, but we've got to get him into the hospital stat. Hopefully the second ambulance the hospital's sending to give us a lift gets here soon!

A gentleman dressed in a funny top hat, velvet jacket and cane stops by. "Hey guys, don't worry. Despite the getup here, I'm not crazy or homeless or anything. I'm Magic Calvin the Master of All Trades, or really William Klein. I entertain kids and teens at rich people's parties and swanky nightclubs, it's a living. Anyway, happy to help however I can."

The vehicle's already safely off the road, and the new one will be here sooner than anything can be repaired, so Magic Calvin gets to entertain Joshua, who's waking up and beginning to get a bit fussy. Poor baby, he misses his mommy and daddy and probably his milk, by now.

A little boy, probably close to ten years old, runs out with a toy drum. "Hey! Magic Calvin! You remember me, I'm Miguel!" He joins in playing with the baby.

Everyone gets to talking while we wait, and we learn a few things about each other. Frank's actually from the East Bay, grew up in Stockton and now lives back near my childhood home in St. Laurence. Magic Calvin's a huge fan both of the San Francisco Giants and of Broadway musicals, and Miguel's a fourth grade honor student.

I look over at some heavily made-up people in elaborate Roman costumes, and I realize they're from the cast of the San Francisco Opera. We've got Lucrezia here, wrapped in her thickly colored and richly dyed Roman matron's toga and still carrying her trademark dagger, and a barbarian soldier, shabbily adorned in a shield and rags.

Joshua begins to wail too loudly for Miguel and Frank, even for Magic Calvin and the paramedics, so Lucrezia comes to comfort him. Taking the newborn in her tender arms, she seems almost divine in her royal robes and flowing dark hair, all the more striking now that the rain has stopped and a large star has appeared over her head. Or maybe it's a searchlight from a car dealership, who knows.

While holding the baby, she jokes about her role in the show, throwing down her dagger. "You know, I don't think I'll be needing this after all. I can be plenty heroic on my own terms by staying alive."

Continuing in the same vein, her barbarian companion adds, "And, I don't see why I would have ever attacked you. After all, we're both survivors of the violence of Empire – you as a woman, and me as a member of an occupied Germanic nation. So how about we become comrades instead?"

Magic Calvin, Frank, the paramedics and I applaud. "I took a few business courses in college, and I remember reading about opportunity costs. Basically that's a fancy word for the cost of everything else you give up when you decide to do something. So Lucrezia, your suicide would have brought about a lot of those for Rome. Kinda silly for your society to demand that of you."

"Hey guys!" Miguel calls out. "I see the other ambulance coming!" He points down the road to the oncoming headlights. We thank our motley group of helpers, pat the collie behind the ears, and load tiny Joshua and his stacks of life-sustaining equipment into the second vehicle.

I was right about the seizures, and about the child's brain tumor. And, thankfully, I was correct about my hesitant, but optimistic prognosis. After a few years of treatment,I'd get to watch Joshua grow up to become a fine strong young little boy.

Back in the hospital, Wilson takes me aside and confirms what I already know about my husband's passing. I open the envelope and give him the letter House set aside for his best friend, and hold his hand while we mourn together.

Then, I excuse myself, and remove the one for Cuddy, heading towards her office. If she's in, I'll hand it to her and see if she wouldn't mind sharing a hot Irish coffee and our mutual grief tonight. Just the two of us women talking, both people House deeply loved, away from the world's chaos and focusing on our own tonight.

It is Christmastime. Not what we'd hoped for or imagined, but we'd get through it and find happiness somehow.


End file.
